Unless You Plan on Leaving the Planet: Here is Why Your Corporate Promise to be "Carbon Free" is As Good As It Is Mythical.

#ConfessionsofaMotorGal

Confessions of a Motor Gal

Article By: Heidi Fritz Martinez CEO Re-Motor America

It takes mere seconds on the Internet and you will find millions of companies promising to be Carbon Free by 2035. Better yet, Carbon Free by 2020. Some complete with silly puns about 20/20 vision already!

How about those that promise, even further, not only to be Carbon Free but to be Chemical Free by 2023?

Come on now, What a Complete Load of Unicorn Fluff! (I am a Marketer. I also understand some technology and we all own this together.)

My favorites are those companies who throw the gauntlet, make the promise and then in none of the rest of the article has any description for a plan of real attainment!

Shocking I know, but let’s start simple and build from there.

As long as you have staff (people), of any kind in your company, this “Carbon free promise” can and will never be true. The human body alone is mostly made up of water (a chemical) and on top of that, humans have carbon footprints too!

So, unless your entire hotel chain, factory, big box store, car wash, school, or town is moving to Mars, you will always have some form of earthly carbon footprint and chemical dependencies. (Not all bad)

So why do we promise the unattainable? What is the attraction in promising the myth?

Is it that so that when we actually get to the year 2034, we have an out? We can recant these statements made in 2019 as just hypothetical, silly, unrealistic goals?

Is it that our marketing teams and writers didn’t understand certain technology or the background science enough?

The fact checker Giants in Publishing fell asleep at the wheel and wanted to be part of the “Green Info Team” enough to let it slide?

What is really going on?

I get it, you want to reduce your power consumption and your harmful impacts on the environment. Maybe you don’t even care about the environment at all, and you just want to save money on your power bill. Whichever it is, just please, call a spade a spade and stop saying the “F” word. There is no such thing as anything free.

Something may be cost free (financially), but it still takes your time which has value. You may remove 20 rooftop units in exchange for 20 brand new, more efficient ones. However, the old ones are now in a landfill somewhere, with thousands of years of biodegrading to do.

Some technologies may use less electricity and may use more water. Some may use more water and less electricity. It really depends on the technology and the continual evolution to the ultimate perfection of the technology. VFDs (Variable Frequency Drives) have been at this for 30 years, many applications are still in sculptor’s form. Motors have been around for 187 years, and they are still giant energy hog works in progress.

As a company, or personally, you may even be advocates for seeing the end of Plastics, Rubber, Steel, Chemical & Coal industries but maybe you don’t realize these guys employ hundreds of thousands if not millions of people as an industry - and what that does to devastate American towns and economies when they are gone?

The point is, there is always a cost. There is always an impact. Some are completely engineered and expected. Some are happening and discovered as these technologies are unfolding and improving. 

However, we need to be realistic in our writing and descriptions about them especially when shared with the public. We can and must be honest about the successes and failures in our attempts to “Go Green” mostly because it gives us a basis to learn and constantly improve outcomes.

Is this article going to stop the myriad of daily corporate "carbon free" promises or manufacturers of technology creating images of exclusive grandeur?

Probably not,but I think in being realistic about our goals and setting the pace for real energy solution installation and integration is perhaps a lot better direction than Unicorn Fluff.

Motor Namaste

We invite you to participate in the discussion. Re-Motor America seeks to help empower American Commercial, Industrial and Municipal companies with intelligent (and realistic) energy decisions and solutions. Please feel free to contact [email protected] for more information or if you have any questions.